The Tigers were drawn away at Wigan in the second round of the competition after a comfortable beating of Crewe Alexandra 3-0 at Gresty Road at the previous stage. We went into the match at the JJB with three Championship matches behind us - a defeat, a draw and a victory, in that order.
The impact of football on the town of Wigan had barely changed, despite the elevation to the Premier League (and admirable facility to survive therein), the erection of the adequate JJB Stadium to replace Springfield Park's kneegrazing shale and quagmire pitch and the decline of the town's rugby league team from world dominators to also-rans. Still not enough people in Wigan were interested in Wigan Athletic.
This meant that the showbiz occasions in the Premier League could garner a reasonable crowd but when Hull City were due in town on a warm late summer evening for a second round game in a competition neither club was especially interested in, the noise of clicking turnstiles were at a bare minimum. City fans travelled in good numbers, as it was a new ground to many of them and even this most unglamorous of top flight clubs still represented a potential top flight scalp, but that was where the majority of real interest in the match lay.
Indeed, the player whom Tigers fans gossiped about most prior to the match - and, indeed, during it - was playing for the opposition. Caleb Folan was a reserve striker at Wigan, signed from Chesterfield, who had struggled to impact upon the Premier League and therefore an occasion like this - a non-Premier League game against non-Premier League opponents - was designed for him. City fans had very briefly seen him years earlier when he signed for the Tigers on loan from boyhood club Leeds United, but now rumours were strong that he was to be on his way to us permanently for a cool million pounds.
Wigan's hopeless manager-by-default Chris Hutchings categorically denied before the game that Folan was going anywhere. Folan duly started the match and proceeded to outplay the rest of his team, even though a player's role shouldn't necessarily include showing up the more well-known and well-paid people in the same kit as he. Wigan spent the whole game severely embarrassing themselves.
City played well, given that Phil Brown had chosen the weapons-gradedly left-footed Andy Dawson at right back (a necessity at the time but oh, how it would turn comical later) and had also offered starting roles to Nicky Featherstone, Stephen McPhee and Stuart Elliott, none of whom were deemed automatic choices at the time - Featherstone due to rawness and youth; the other two due to there simply being better alternatives available.
(Look at this photo by the way - how often do you capture the image of a player competing in a game against two future team-mates? Featherstone is challenging Folan while Kevin Kilbane looks on).
Elliott, our ultra-religious goalscoring wideman from Ulster, had been our finest player of the noughties but was in the last year of his contract at the KC and it was obvious, at the age of almost 30, that he had some serious work to do on his game and his demeanour if he were to be offered a new deal of any description.
One thing of many which had so thrilled us about Elliott was his capability of scoring great goals, as well as being a great goalscorer. Anyone who saw him chip the goalkeeper from the touchline at Plymouth Argyle in 2005/6 when we were down to ten men will back this up. That was probably his best goal for City, although there are so many to choose from. But I suspect his second best goal for City was the one which ultimately proved to be his 68th and last, and the one which beat a Premier League side on their own turf.
There was a misdirected clearance across the Wigan back four, about 30 yards out, and the ball was swirling in the air. Elliott charged towards it in competition with Mario Melchiot, and won the race cleanly to launch a flying toe-poke above and beyond Mike Pollitt from a good 30 yards. A strange, amazing goal, and yet typical of the sort of thing Elliott had always excelled at. For all Elliott's woes - illnesses had hampered him after Peter Taylor left to the extent that we wondered if he'd play again - it was obvious that he was still capable of making sudden impacts on games which were dying, and this was obvious here. The game was only half an hour old but it was already on its last legs as a contest. Few seemed interested, especially on the home side. Elliott kindled interest by scoring the sort of goal which made you proud you could be bothered to turn up.
City could have got more - prolific non-scorer McPhee missed, as ever, his array of one-on-ones as Wigan clearly had no interest in the match whatsoever. The chatter about Folan was forgotten as City defended stoutly in the second half and worked with ease towards the final whistle and a first top-division scalp away from home since Ken Wagstaff saw off Coventry City at Highfield Road in the FA Cup in 1972.
There were only three days left of the August transfer window, but during those three days Folan's move - for Hull City's first ever £1 million outlay - was confirmed. He promptly fractured his skull on his debut at Blackpool and it took a while for us to see his best form - or indeed a goal - from him, although it worked out splendidly in the end.
Elliott's decline couldn't be halted by this latest moment of magic. He barely got a second glance from Brown for the next three months, featuring in a League game for the last time when introduced as a late sub at Stoke City on New Year's Day 2008. His last opportunity came when he was picked to start at Plymouth in the FA Cup third round just days later, but he played so poorly in City's 3-2 defeat that Brown had seen enough and packed him off to Doncaster Rovers on loan, whom he joined permanently when his contract expired around the same time as his old team-mates were tasting play-off glory.
We go to Wigan tomorrow in entirely different circumstances. Barring a full-scale revenge scoreline after their 5-0 pummelling of us at the KC in August, the JJB Stadium will remain the place where Elliott, hero of two promotions and so much more, had his last glorious hurrah for the Tigers.
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